Imho, it's just wrong to release builds, less fast than they could be. That's all. In school for example we still use Windows XP x32, but on the other side have Core 2 Duo CPUs, which are quite decent.
If there *would* be a new SSE5 or whatever, sure, don't use that on our release builds, as it would be too new, but as SSE2/3 is very common for 6/7 years, I would not disable the use of them. Basically what you say is, that we should release x32 builds, slower than they could be, just because 7 year old hardware can't handle that. Sorry, but we are not a Text Editor, we are a 3D application. You suggest to limit speed due to compatibility with old machines. I don't say we should drop support for non SSE2 platforms, but at the same time, we should not restrain people with "new" hardware. Get it? :) Thomas Am 12.12.2011 13:43, schrieb Sergey Sharybin: > Ray optimization (which seems to be using sse only) is enabled for linux > too. I still can't see real benefit of using global sse2/sse3 optimization. > Supporting both of optimized and not optimized builds just will took more > time for platform maintainers and will lead to confuse when downloading > archives from blender.org. Think everybody who is really familiar with 3D > graphics already switched to newer 64bit hardware to have more memory > available, and guys who're still using 32bit processors wouldn't really > notice big difference between current builds and builds with global sse2/3 > optimization. > > On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Thomas Dinges<[email protected]> wrote: > >> I don't like this. We should build our regular builds with all SSE >> extensions we support and make x32 non sse legacy builds. Asking people of >> modern hardware (again, even sse3 is in all cpus from 2005 and later) is >> not the way to go. Big -1! >> >> Sent from my mobile device >> >> ----- Reply message ----- >> Von: "Sergey Sharybin"<[email protected]> >> An: "bf-blender developers"<[email protected]> >> Betreff: [Bf-committers] 64-bit builds with ray optimization >> Datum: Mo., Dez. 12, 2011 08:45 >> >> >> Hi, >> >> Tomas, as i understand we're speaking about x86_64 platform, not x86 and >> all x86_64 bit compatible processor are comng with sse2 at least (i'm not >> sure if sse3 is used in out code). It wouldn't be a problem to enable >> rayoptimization and compile with sse/sse2 support (which also improves >> speed of tracking). >> >> Main issue is about x86 platforms. Yes, we've got code which detects if >> sse2 is supported and it's already used in Cycles and blender internal, >> we're only missing such check for motion tracking which is compiling >> without sse2 support on x86 platforms. The here issue is: Eigen library can >> use sse2/sse3 instructions to improve speed of matrix operations, but Eigen >> is totally header-based library and making runtime detection of sse support >> simply wouldn't work here. >> >> So i think we should compile 64bit builds of Blender with rayoptimization, >> sse and sse2 optimizations. For 32bit keep global sse optimizations >> disabled and enable only rayoptimization (it seems to be quite safe). >> >> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Thomas Dinges<[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> SSE3 was introduced in 2004 by Intel (Pentium 4) and in 2005 by AMD. >>> Thats 6/7 years now already. >>> >>> If there is any code that can't detect SSE2/3 on runtime, we should just >>> make extra builds. But making only 1 build (even for x86) would be >> stupid. >>> It's okay to support 10 year old cpu's who don't have these extensions, >>> but at the same time we should not disable these optimizations for >>> people using, well "old" hardware too. 6/7 years is old. ;-) >>> >>> Am 12.12.2011 02:10, schrieb Antony Riakiotakis: >>>> Hi everyone, it's release time soon. >>>> There has been some debate on irc on the topic of enabling ray >>>> optimization for release builds. >>>> >>>> Pros are: faster program, cons of course are that we are less >>>> compatible with older machines. >>>> >>>> I see though no reason why 64-bit machines, that support sse2, should >>>> not be built with ray optimization on by default. >>>> >>>> If this is decided upon, there are some -sse3 flags in cycles that >>>> should probably be taken care of. >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Bf-committers mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers >>> >>> -- >>> Thomas Dinges >>> Blender Developer, Artist and Musician >>> >>> www.dingto.org >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Bf-committers mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers >>> >> >> >> -- >> With best regards, Sergey Sharybin >> _______________________________________________ >> Bf-committers mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers >> _______________________________________________ >> Bf-committers mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers >> > > -- Thomas Dinges Blender Developer, Artist and Musician www.dingto.org _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
